An Iceberg Collision Is Responsible For The Near Destruction Of A Penguin Colony

The population of a colony of Adélie penguins site in Commonwealth Bay , Antarctica has steeply fallen following the arrival of a massive iceberg lettuce , which has dramatically transfer the local conditions favorable to the birds .

In astudy published to Antarctic Science , the 2010 grounding a 100 km2 iceberg lettuce , dubbed BO9B , has allowed for the creation of an ice sheet of paper that remains in the area yr - pear-shaped . The abrupt change in terrain has spelled end of the world for thousands of the wench , which rely on open water to give . Now , they must travel a retentive distance to find solid food : over 60 kilometers .

Just over a century ago , the area was home to an estimated 200,000 birds ( although the field of study mark that this might be an over - estimate ) . However , it does n’t come along that the iceberg is responsible for for 150,000 deaths , as has been widely reported . In 2011 , scientists count 12,834 pairs of the birds . The author of the paper , reelect to the area two years by and by , counted only 5,520 occupied nest , with the number of birds estimated to be in the miserable thousands .

William Duplessie

The stranding of giant icebergs in the southern Ross Sea that draw a blank the Adélie penguin ’s approaching way to their colony , thus increasing the distance birds must travel to provender , had a greater effect on chick slew and breeding success than any other environmental parameter measured ( Dugger et al.2014 ) . In that study , penguin pairs that utilize cracks in the sea ice successfully fledged chick while those where one or both members of the pair resorted to the 60 km commute across the fast ice failed ( Dugger et al.2014 ) .

The squad believes that barring a mass - migration or elimination of the methamphetamine hydrochloride , the dependency will decline to nothing in the next 20 year .

[ Antarctic ScienceviaTime ]

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